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By STEVEN R. REED FREDERICKSBURG, Tex. (UPI) — When farmers around this German settlement see a rattlesnake slither under the henhouse on a hot July afternoon they have a choice — try to kill the poisonous reptile themselves or call Augustine Lopez. Lopez, a grandfather, loves the hills around this town for their beauty and because they provide homes for the rattles nakes which help him fight inflation. When his carpentry work slows down Lopez knows he can walk into the hills and catch snakes worth $100 any after noon. Lopez, his wife, daughter and grand-daughter have cooked and sold rattlesnake meat priced at 75 cents for two pieces. “The snakes weigh from four to seven pounds. I like to filet the big ones, just get the meat. If you leave the bones behind you only get two or three pounds,”’ he said. “You filet it and batter it like chicken and fry it and it tastes just like fish.” On his good days Lopez has caught as many as 40 snakes. ‘People will call and tell me they saw a rattlesnake go under their barn or their houses or their henhouse,” Lopez said, “They say, ‘I got a few rattlesnakes, come on out.’ “In the afternoons the rattles nakes are on the big rocks or under the ledges in the shade. That's one easy way to catch them. They sit there and catch mice and rats and little birds that run around the ledges. They live off them.’ In the spring, before the snakes wiggle out of their winter dens, Lopez squirts gasoline through a rubber hose into the dens to route the snakes. But in the summer he can catch them with a string snare, “It’s real simple. We catch them and put them in tow sacks, bring them home and cut their heads off.” Lopez first hunted the snakes with his father. “I was just a boy. He would catch them for their oil. He used the grease for medicine. He thought it was the best thing in the world for arthritis. The snakes have oil inside their stomachs. A real big heavy one has white tallow inside his stomach. It’s beautiful. You can boil it down like hog lard. You have to strain it real good.” The snake skins are worth at least a dollar a foot but a big snake in the six foot category is often worth as much as $25. “You have to clean them, scrape the meat off, stretch them and cure them with a curing solution. It takes a lot of time, but it doesn’t cost me much to get the hide and it makes me feel bad to sell them for even $10 or 15.” Lopez has never been bitten but said he has had some close not to “I like to go out by myself, but sometimes I take my wife. She got to where she helps me skin them. At first she thought she didn’t want any part of it, but now it’s a hobby to her.” Billy McCrary sentenced two years SCOTTSBORO, ALA. (UPI) A Judge Wednesday ordered Billy Ray McCrary, chief state witness at the trial of Hugh Otis Bynum, to serve a two-year prison sentence. McCrary, who testified last March that Bynum paid him $2,000 to hire someone to place a bomb that crippled a prominent Scottsboro attorney, was convicted Dec. 26, 1973 of transporting illegal whiskey and was sentenced to two years agent but was placed on probation and allowed to remain out of prison.
Newspaper Details
Cullman Times Democrat
Cullman, Alabama, US
Thu, Jul 10, 1975
Page 8
Full Page
Clipped by
Hayden H.
USA 19 Aug 2026
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